1. Field of the Disclosure
The present invention relates to a method and device for managing presence information within a home network. Specifically, the present invention relates to the field of delivering services to devices within a home network depending on user presence.
2. Description of Related Art
In present computer and telecommunications networks the concept of presence information is becoming increasingly important. Presence information is a status indicator that conveys ability and/or willingness of a potential communication partner to communicate. Usually, for enabling the communication a client is installed on the communication device of the user. This user client provides presence information via a network connection to a server or generally a service provider supervising the communication, which then is stored and can be made available for distribution to other users. Presence information has wide application in many communication services, i.e. instant messaging or voice over IP.
The current Skype™ implementation of a voice over IP application on a client device provides a good example of what is possible in the field of presence management. The application knows that a user is present—for example, he is on a call or participating in chat. Further the application is aware that the user is not there e.g. when the PC is powered down, but also when the screen saver kicks in or a after a time out of a predetermined period of inactivity.
A user client may publish a present state to indicate the current communication status of the user, i.e. whether he is available or willing to communicate. The most common use of presence today is to display an indicator icon on instant messaging clients, together with a corresponding text description of each state, or of the users availability, such as ‘on-hook’, ‘off-hook’, ‘free for chat’, ‘busy’, ‘away’ or ‘do not disturb’.
In case that a user is logged into more than one device, then the Skype™ server or generally the communication server application will determine that a user is logged into two separate clients and has to handle communication with the two clients separately.
The disadvantage of the state of art is therefore, that it is resource consuming for the server or service provider to handle communication with each client device of the user separately.